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‘What the Eyes Don’t See’ Review: Sounding Flint’s Siren

In a bracing—if overly dramatic—memoir, a doctor recounts her role alerting the public to the presence of lead in a Michigan city’s water supply. John Donvan reviews “What the Eyes Don’t See” by Mona Hanna-Attisha.

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John Donvan

June 19, 2018 7:07 p.m. ET

In September 2015, during the very week a pediatrician-turned-researcher exposed the high likelihood that lead-laced water was poisoning the child population of Flint, Mich., two officials of the Environmental Protection Agency engaged in an email exchange that, in retrospect, serves as an encapsulation of that city’s water crisis. Wrote one to the other: “I’m not so sure Flint is the community we want to go out on a limb for.” Came the too-succinct reply: “I concur.”